Facilities
Equipments:
- An iNano®nanoindenter for 3D and 4D mapping of materials, maximum force of 50 mN, resolution of 3 nN, noise-floor of < 0.1 nm, a digital resolution of 0.02 nm and drift rates of < 0.05 nm/s (Nanomechanics, Inc. A KLA-Tecnor Company).
- A compact, high-resolution tabletop Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), including a stage, control electronics, probes, and a video microscope.
- Testing machine for nanomechanical characterization (Agilent UTM T150 by Agilent Technologies);
- Vibration Test System TIRA vib 51144 (Frequency range 2-6500 Hz, Rated peak force SINE/RANDOM 440N, Max rated travel 25.4mm) equipped with Power Amplifier TIRA BAA 1000 (Frequency range 2-20000 Hz);
- ElectroForce Linearmotor 3300 Series II by Bose (Frequency range 1-100 Hz, Rated peak force SINE/RANDOM 3000N, Max rated travel 25 mm);
- Stratasys J750TM 3D Printer, six-material capacity, 14-micron (0.00055 in.) resolution, accuracy up to 200 microns for full model size;
- 3D printer (GMAX3D by Gimax);
- Engraving Machines (EGX-600 and MDX-540 by Roland);
- Laser cutter CO2-13090 – 150 WATT (Billy srl);
- Electromechanical testing machines (two ELE Tritest 50 by ELE International Ltd, one -strain, one Midi 10 and one Beta 100 by Messphysik Materials Testing);
- POLYTEC Hydraulic Control Power Units, Pressure max 200bar;
- Triaxial Hoeck Load Cell A137 38.10x75mm 1.5", 70MPa;
- Linear drive unit (Damo s.r.l., model AMV120LB) equipped with ABB (ABB Sace S.p.A.) AC servo motor (model BSM0400CN00) and controlled with ABB servo drive (model BSD0400);
- Linear/circular transmission polariscope designed by us and equipped with a white and sodium vapor lightbox purchased from Tiedemann & Betz;
- Stereoscopic microscope Nikon SMZ-800 equipped with Objectives (P-Plan Apo 0.5X and P-ED Plan 1.5X by Nikon);
- High speed cameras Sony PXW-FS5 and PXW-FS7;
- Digital cameras Sony alpha9, alpha 6300;
- Digital cameras Nikon D100 and D200 equipped with AF Nikkor 18-35mm 1:3.5-4.5 D, AF-S micro Nikkor 105 mm 1:2.8G ED and AF-S micro Nikkor 70–180 mm 1:4.5–5.6 D lenses;
- Soleil-Babinet compensator (400-1000nm) of Thorlabs, model SBC-VIS;
- Full HD camcorder Sony Handycam HDR-XR550;
- Motorized System Olympus upright metallurgical microscope BX61, equipped with a SC50 camera and with the Olympus Stream software (Olympus);
- Stereoscopic 3D Full HD camcorder Sony Handycam HDR-TD10E;
- High definition digital camera SONY NEX-5N and alpha6300 with APS-C Sensor;
- High speed digital camera CASIO EX-FH25;
- High speed image acquisition Dalsa Genie HM1400 GigE (1400 x 1024, 64 fps);
- High accuracy distributed data acquisition system Measurement Systems Ltd Datascan 7320;
- Modular data acquisition systems NI CompactDAQ (NI cDAQ-9172) and NI CompactRIO (NI cRIO-9074) equipped with NI-9219, NI-9233, NI-9237, NI-9401, NI-9411 and NI-9263 modules;
- 8-slot PXI mainframe chassis NI PXI-1042Q equipped with NI PXI-8108 controller, NI PXI-5105 8-channel digitizer/oscilloscope and NI PXI-6221 data acquisition system;
- Olympus PANAMETRICS-NDT square wave pulser/receiver 5077PR and PANAMETRICS-NDT EPOCH 4B Ultrasonic flow detector equipped with Olympus Contact Transducers for Longitudinal waves (NDT 5MHZ/1.0", NDT 1MHZ/1.0", NDT 0.5MHZ/1.5", NDT 100kHZ/1.5", NDT 50kHZ/1.5") and Normal Incidence Shear Waves (1MHz/1.00", 0.5MHz/1.00", 100kHz/1.00");
- HPC cluster (two 64-core ProLiant BL460c by HP);
- HP blade system composed of 7 compute nodes of the type HP Proliant BL685 G7, each equipped with 4 AMD Opteron 6272/16c processors and 256 GB of RAM. The blades are interconnected with each other via Infiniband. The system thus has a total number of 448 CPU cores.
Softwares:
- Finite element codes for linear and nonlinear structural and solid mechanics applications (FEM codes: ABAQUS, Comsol Multiphysics);
- Codes for solid modelling and mesh generation;
- Mathematical libraries;
- Codes for symbolic manipulation;
- Finite element and boundary element codes developed in the Computational Solid and Structural Mechanics Lab are available;
- Home made codes such as Hierachical (i) lattice spring, (ii) spring-block, (iii) random fuse models.
- Anechoic, semi-anechoic and reverberating chamber for acoustic and vibroacoustic measurements, including laser vibrometry and sound intensity probe measurements
- Aura-lab (auralisation laboratory for psychoacoustic investigations of the effect of sound on human wellbeing)
- Full-scale sound transmission loss test facilities to measure the acoustic insulation performance of building materials and components, such as windows, dry-wall panels, doors.
- Cusing Concept M2 Metal 3D additive manufacturing facility for metal manufacturing with a build volume of 250x250x250mm, with the ability to prepare samples with common engineering materials, such as aluminum, titanium alloys or steel.
- High Resolution Optical Detection. Two laser vibrometers (Polytec, PDV-100 and PSV-400-H) can each measure the projected component of an object's surface vibration vector along the direction of the incident laser beam. The noncontact measurements can resolve the displacement amplitudes to as small as 0.1 pm, with a frequency range from near DC to MHz. An integrated CCD camera is used for monitoring of the measurement volume. With the aid of microscope objectives, measurements can be performed on micron-sized objects.
- 3-D Photolithography. Commercial 3D-Photolitography Nanoscribe system to create microstructures with submicron resolution. To fabricate microstructures a laser beam is guided through a microscope optic and focused within liquid or solid photoresist. Polymerization occurs at the focal point of the laser due to two-photon absorption.
- Impedance tubes to determine the acoustic impedance of material samples, such as foams, Schenk servo-hydraulic actuators (50kN to1MN) for structural dynamic testing (on Empa's strong floor)
- Tira-Vib electrodynamic shakers from 18N to 400N
- Electron Microscopy Center with transmission and scanning electron microscopes, including
- Focused Ion Beam sample preparation facilities
- Center for X-ray Analytics (including X-ray Computed-Tomography, such as micro- tomography for the investigation of small samples)
- Accredited material testing facilities (tensile, compression, from mN to MN). Multi- scale fluid channel facility for the built environment.
- NEST: A full-scale modular research and innovation building where new technologies, materials and systems are tested, researched, honed and validated in realistic conditions. The close cooperation with partners from research, industry and the public sector helps launch innovative building and energy technologies on the market faster (www.empa.ch/web/nest).
The laboratory is equipped with the Polytec PSV-400 3D Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer.
This device consists of three individual Scanning Laser Vibrometers heads, data acquisition and controlling unit. The measurement is realized by pointing the three scanning heads from different angles to one spot simultaneously. Therefore, knowing the position of scanning heads and the geometry of the specimen it is possible to determine full velocity vectors. Due to its non-contact properties, very high resolution in both time and space domain, 3D SLDV is a perfect tool for measurements of the dynamics of metamaterials.
It will be an essential measuring device for experimental tests in the proposed project.
Supplementary equipment, which will be used during the project, are electromechanical shakers, signal waveform generators, amplifiers and various types of piezoelectric transducers.
Another device available at IFFM is a terahertz spectrometer (TPS Spectra 3000 from TerraView) for both transmission and reflection modes, supplied with a Large Sample Gantry Imaging system.
The system provides continuous coverage in the range 40 GHz- 10 THz.
Also, vibrothermography set–up consisting of ultrasound exciter, high-performance thermal imaging camera FLIR SC–5600 and FLIR software for data acquisition is available.
TURLAB is a water wave dynamics Lab equipped with a 5m-diameter rotating tank, which is one of the largest rotating platforms available for scientific investigations of turbulence in the presence of rotation and/or stratification in Europe. The Laboratory is equipped with 6 cameras that can use standard f-mount lens and have software control of many internal parameters.
- 2 Dalsa cameras able to acquire in stand alone or in synchronized (by an external trigger) mode.
Their frequencies rate ranges from 1 to 60 Hz at full resolution (2352 x 1728 px).
Pixel depth can be selected among 8, 10 bits, grey scale. - 2 Dalsa cameras able to acquire in stand alone or in synchronized (by an external trigger) mode.
Their frequencies acquisition rate ranges from 1 to 60 Hz at full resolution (1024 x 1024 px).
Pixel depth can be selected among 8, 10 12 bits, grey scale. - 1 Mikrotron camera, whose rates span from 10 to 500 Hz at full resolution (1280 x 1024 px).
Pixel depth is 8 bit, grey scale. - 1 Flare 2M360-CL, with rate ranging from 2 to 280 Hz at full resolution(2048x1088), color scale, pixel depth 8 and 10 bits
The acquisition is performed by two pc, protected by a UPS system, equipped with special frame grabbers (IO industries) that collect collect data from cameras through a camera link connection. These systems can control cameras, their parameters, the synchronization and the acquisition settings.
- Forefront technologies for the specimen preparation. In addition to traditional approaches, relying on well-grounded procedures such as laser and water jet cuts, among the others, cutting-edge manufacturing technologies operating at different scale levels (responsible for the definition of each hierarchical stage) are available.
Among them we can enumerate:- 3D printing, allowing additive manufacturing of 3D hierarchical MMs starting from digital models;
- 3D Photolithography, based on a Nanoscribe system exploited to create hierarchical MMs with submicron resolution;
- Metal foams (based on inclusions of air or other gaseous pockets in the metal structure) and lattice structures manufacturing;
- Laser micromachining for polymer structuring (patterning, scribing, drilling, cutting, milling) at micron scale, using a dry, safe and low temperature direct photo-thermal ablation technique.
- Forefront and unique experimental facilities ideal for setting and exploring the most disparate experimental configurations and cutting-edge investigation tools covering a wide range of frequencies (from tens of Hz to MHz)
- A vast range of piezoelectric (contact, air-coupled and waterproof) transducers to excite and detect mechanical and acoustic waves in complex configurations
- Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer (SLDV) for the contactless acquisition
- The French biggest accessible water tank (8m x 6.5m x 6m) which makes the IEMN a unique experimental research environment in the Europe landscape for underwater applications
- Power amplifier and generator, dedicated frame for motorized displacements, etc
- About 1600 m2 of clean rooms (rooms where the particle concentration, temperature or humidity and pressure are controlled)
- Characterization centre for the measurement of the main electrical, microwave and electromechanical parameters of devices manufactured in clean room
- Impedance tube for acoustic characterization
Equipment:
- High Definition Oscilloscope: Agilent Infinium DSO9024H
- Vibrating System: Shaker TIRA Vib, Power Amplifier BAA 120
- Arbitrary Waveform Generator: Agilent 33500B
- Ultrasonic Sensors with different frequency bandwidth
- Acquisition system: Laser Vibrometer Polytec OFV-505, Vibrometer Controller Polytrec OFV-5000 (displacement and velocity decoder)
- Voltage linear amplifier 20x: FLC Electronics A400DI
- Accelerometers
- Impedance and Spectrum Analyser: HP 4192A
- “INNOVA” AFM by Bruker equipped with the following modules: Contact mode, Tapping mode, Lateral Force Microcopy (LFM), Force Modulation Microscopy (FMM), Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), Conductive AFM (C-AFM), Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM), Nano-Thermal analysis (nano-TA). Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM) and Atomic Force Acoustic Microscopy (AFAM) to be acquired
HP Z6 Workstation, Intel Xeon platinum 8260 CPU, 128 GB RAM
The operating office within the PoliHub incubator allows Phononic Vibes to proceed to its corporate activities and numerical simulations thanks to in-house software for optimization and simulation of meta-materials and modelling. Phononic Vibes has also an in-house Lab inside its office in order to ensure some of its prototyping activities.
The tests are made in partners and client’s facilities (anechoic and double chambers). Phononic Vibes has access to laboratories for manufacturing and industrial production tools of several partner, especially for the seismic applications.
Numerical solvers
- Edge finite elements for Maxwell problems able to model dispersive, anisotropic materials.
- Boundary elements for scattering problems (BEM++ is an open source solver that we have adapted to our needs)
- Spectral elements for acoustics, elasticity, thermal processes
- Plane Wave Expansion eigenvalue solver
- Rigorous Coupled Wave Analysis for harmonic problems